Ted Cruz: I didn’t work against the House border bill

It wasn’t me: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz denied being partly responsible for the implosion of House Republicans’ border-control bill, telling the Washington Post his meetings with House conservatives were about…fellowship. “The suggestion by some that House members are unable to stand up and fight for their own conservative principles is offensive and belittling to House conservatives,” the Republican told the Post. The House delayed its recess to keep working on a bill, and may vote Friday. Some, meanwhile, have started calling the Texan “Speaker Cruz.”

And in the Senate: The Senate has its own problems with a border-control bill, as the Hill reports. On Thursday the chamber couldn’t get its bill done, as Republicans blocked a $2.7 billion measure that would provide funds for handling a wave of child migrants crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. Whatever the House does Friday, there won’t be legislation out of Congress for about five weeks. Late Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said his chamber’s next votes wouldn’t be until Sept. 8.

Next highway crisis:May: The Senate gave in Thursday night and passed a House bill to fund highway projects. But as the Associated Press writes, funds only last through May, which is much shorter than Democrats wanted. Some of them wasted no time calling for a longer-term solution.

Clinton could have killed bin Laden: Former President Bill Clinton on Sept. 10, 2001 told an Australian audience that he nearly had Osama bin Laden killed. Just hours before planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, Clinton said he “nearly got” the al Qaeda leader but didn’t go through with a missile strike because of expected collateral damage. “I nearly got him,” Clinton said, according to audio aired by Sky News Australia. CNN has more on Clinton, who said: “I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.”

Labor, divided: The Wall Street Journal reports several thousand unionized coal miners, electrical workers and others filled Pittsburgh’s downtown Thursday to protest the Obama administration’s proposed rule to curb carbon emissions from the country’s power plants. But several major unions were absent from the protest, the Journal said, an indication of how the issue has divided the labor movement. Some unions have backed the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions but others haven’t taken a clear position.